Hoyle Card Games

Go fish, call Gin, and Skunk your opponent in this decent compilation of card games for the GBC.

Just before Christmas last year, Sierra launched its popular PC Hoyle card series on the Game Boy Color, kicking it off with one of the system's best gambling titles, Hoyle Casino. The design wasn't a fluke, as the company has struck another bit of gold with its second parlor-style title on the portable: Hoyle Card Games, a compilation of 14 different games that folks can play against computer or human opponents when a deck of cards isn't readily available.

Fourteen games

Fourteen characters

Two players on one system

Link cable support for two players

Only for Game Boy Color

The best thing that can be said about Hoyle Card Games is the fact that there's a game for everyone here . Just check out the full list of card games you can boot up and play:

Solitaire

Four Free

Golf Par 6

Golf Par 7

Klondike 1

Klondike 3

Pyramid

Crazy 8s

Cribbage

Gin

Go Fish

Hearts

Old Maid

Spades

War

Apart from the Six Solitaire options, every one of the competitive games can be played with another player, either on the same system or through the use of a link cable. Every game also has a detailed help screen to assist you in learning the rules for each -- which is handy considering the instruction manual packaged with the cartridge includes very unhelpful, horrible directions.

At the beginning of the game you'll pick your on-screen persona -- you can pick anything from a bald-headed professor to a crocodile to an inanimate teddybear. Unfortunately you cannot pick the name -- it would have been nice to be able to personalize the selection. The game hints at individual traits for each of these characters, but I wasn't able to see any change in AI decisions from the different computer opponents.

The games themselves are well designed, for the most part, adding animation and style wherever possible. Most of the games have a decent point and click interface that makes it extremely easy to jump in and play. War's probably the easiest and dumbest game on the cartridge, but the designers spiced it up with tanks that act out the point structure -- when all three tanks on a player's side is eliminated in the War phase, the game's over. And in Go Fish, a flopping goldfish leaps in and out of a pond to represent each player's turn -- it's a nice touch.

Unfortunately, in some cases the games have been abridged in their interface that can easily confuse a newcomer. Take, for example, Cribbage -- this is probably the card game with the most complex scoring system, but the game never lets the player know how his or her hand scored. After the overturn phase, the game just tallies up the points and gives offers up the final score. In Gin, the scoring screen is so sloppily designed with huge fonts that you have to scroll the image just to see what it says.

And there are no real options to customize a game. You can't change how many computer opponents to play against -- it's always four players in Go Fish, Spades, Hearts and Crazy 8s, and two players in Cribbage and War (I've played three and four player versions of these games in real life). What you see is what you get -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just one more thing that makes this game less than complete.

The Verdict

Despite its issues in design, the game's still a great purchase and a real keeper -- each of the games have little nitpicky things in their interface and design, but if you know how to play the games then you'll follow along just fine. It's not the best title to pick up if you don't know how to play any of these games, so I suggest boning up on games such as Cribbage, Gin, and Hearts before you pick up Hoyle Card Games for your on-the-go collection.